RIP Anita Ekberg

By Anita Gates

January 11, 2015

Anita Ekberg, who became an international symbol of lush beauty and unbridled sensuality in the 1960 Federico Fellini film “La Dolce Vita,” died Sunday morning. She was 83.

Her death, in Rocca di Papa, southeast of Rome, was caused by complications from a longtime illness and was confirmed by her lawyer, Patrizia Ubaldi.

Fellini cast Ms. Ekberg in “La Dolce Vita” as a hedonistic American actress visiting Rome. A single moonlit scene — in which she wades into the Trevi Fountain in a strapless evening gown, turns her face ecstatically to the fountain’s waterfall and seductively calls Marcello Mastroianni’s character to join her — established her place in cinema history.

Ms. Ekberg won a Golden Globe, sharing the 1956 award for most promising newcomer with Dana Wynter and Victoria Shaw, but most of her roles focused primarily on her face and figure. When she traveled overseas to entertain American troops in the 1950s, it was as a sex symbol. Bob Hope introduced her as “the greatest thing to come from Sweden since smorgasbord” and joked that her parents had won the Nobel Prize for architecture.

Decades later, she told Entertainment Weekly: “When you’re born beautiful, it helps you start in the business. But then it becomes a handicap.”

Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was born on Sept. 29, 1931, in Malmo, Sweden, one of eight children of a harbor master.

She did some modeling in her teens and was later named Miss Sweden, traveling to the United States as a special guest at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City. She did not take home the Miss Universe title but did win an American modeling contract and was soon acting as well.

Ms. Ekberg’s first credited film role was in “Abbott and Costello Go to Mars” (1953), playing a voluptuous guard on the planet Venus. During the next decade or so she was kept busy in Hollywood movies, including “Blood Alley” (1955), a drama with John Wayne, in which she played a Chinese woman, “4 for Texas” (1963), a western with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin; “Call Me Bwana” (1963), a comedy with Hope; and two comedies with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, “Artists and Models” (1955) and “Hollywood or Bust” (1956). She made a cameo appearance in the travel comedy “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium” (1969). On the more serious side, she had a supporting role as the alluring, social-climbing wife of Henry Fonda’s character in King Vidor’s epic production of “War and Peace” (1956).

But it was “La Dolce Vita” that made her famous. She worked for Fellini again, as a billboard photograph that comes to life in the segment of “Boccaccio 70” (1962) that he directed, and as herself in both “The Clowns” (1970) and “Intervista” (1987). Over a five-decade acting career, she made more than 50 feature films.

Romantically linked with Hollywood actors including Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Rod Taylor, Yul Brynner and Errol Flynn, she married and divorced twice. Her husbands were Anthony Steel, a British matinee idol (1956 to 59), and Rik Van Nutter , an American actor who also appeared in films under the name Clyde Rogers (1963 to 75). Mr. Steel died in 2001, Mr. Van Nutter in 2005.

Ms. Ekberg was often outspoken in interviews, naming famous people she couldn’t bear. And she was frequently quoted as saying that it was Fellini who owed his success to her, not the other way around.

“They would like to keep up the story that Fellini made me famous, Fellini discovered me,” she said in a 1999 interview with The New York Times. “So many have said they discovered me.”

But she did appear reflective at times. “If you want la dolce vita, it is how you look at life,” she told The New York Observer the same year, while in the United States to publicize “The Red Dwarf,” a European film in which she played an aging opera star. “When I go back to Rome, my roses will be in bloom again.”

Born: 9/29/1931, Malmö, Skåne län, Sweden

Died: 1/11/2015, Rocca di Papa, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Mississippi Gambler – 1953 (maid of honor)

Take Me to Town – 1953 (dancehall girl)

Valerie – 1957 (Valerie Horvat)

4 for Texas – 1963 (Elya Carlson)

Heads or Tails – 1969 (Manuela)

The Long Ride of Vengeance – 1972 (Jane)

Valley of the Dancing Widows – 1974 [scenes were cut]